(forget I said that)

The branch meeting last night went quite well. I've been meaning to make one since I got back up here, and finally I have. Maybe it'll become regular. One of the directors of the Central Mosque was along to give a talk, along with the vice-chair of a local Pakistani community organisation (a civil engineer who's been living in Edinburgh, on and off, since 1962 and had some interesting perspectives). Now, I knew that muslims had been cooling on the party, and they confirmed this, but it also gave me a chance to see what the prevailing opinion in the local branch is. I'm slightly encouraged by the lack of any visible support for the leadership (lack of support for the leadership is, after all, a time-honoured Labour Party tradition).

After that, the plan was to go somewhere dark to see some Geminids with L&S, but it had clouded over.

I had another dream about waves and things, which was interesting. I don't usually remember dreams, but the last couple of nights I've had quite similar ones. Fist there was one where I was walking along the beach in a wide bay with some friends, and an extraordinarily large wave hit the point behind us, sending huge horizontal sheets of water across the bay at us. Last night I was driving in Finland with some (also unidentified) friends. As we got to Helsinki it was suddenly snowcovered. We checked into a hotel, and after checking into our rooms we stepped outside, where there were deep beds of moss and marshy pools. Suddenly what looked like an enormous dirty geyser spouted in the distance, but after a few seconds we realised that it was a volcano and we were all probably going to die when the blast of the explosion reached us. We ran, but before we got back to the hotel (I think we were going to hide in the foundations) I woke up.

Probably very Freudian, but I intend to deny everything.

This morning was the second trip to the dentist. It turned out that the roots of the tooth were exposed once the decayed tissue was removed, and the nerves were totally dead and necrotic, but happily don't seem to be infected at all. So there's another temporary filling in, but an antiseptic dressing this time, for two or three weeks until a permanent one's put in after the dentist is sure there's no trace of infection - otherwise, that way abscesses lie. I have antibiotics in case it gets septic and painful, but he was optimistic about me not needing them.

I was vaguely hoping to be able to stress the agonising nature of the treatment, and how manly and stoic I was, but after two injections (the first one didn't seem to be taking hold fast enough) I didn't feel a thing. While the anaesthetic took hold, though, he set about some deposits on my teeth with what felt like a hammer and chisel. I may later decide to stress how manly and stioc I was at this point, but as it would be much less impressive I may instead decide that it'd be a waste of time. They still haven't worn off, incidentally, so I'm still a drooling incoherent idiot. Usually on a Tuesday that's only the case for the first hour or so.

Addendum:

The mosque trustee was saying that they are "fortunate" that their sponsor - King Fahd - sends them an Imam and pays for his support, so they don't have to do this themselves. Given the prevailing view of the Saud family (that they're a scary bunch of megalomaniac Wahhabists) I wouldn't personally be as grateful as all that if I were involved. Their gaff, though, and their rules.

My jaw hurts a little still (at 1:50pm), but I'm not sure if that's because it was attacked with a drill this morning or because I sat there gaping for nearly an hour.

I dreamed that the government had banned dancing (or at least taxed it), and I was hanging out with a bunch of people, and we started singing ("American Pie", for some unknown reason) in order to mount a civil disobediance movement.

Mmm, I love it when they start chipping away at the tartar with a cold chisel. Having that done in an extremely vigorous fashion by a spectacularly sadistic (if very attractive) blond Australian dentist was the only thing that finally scared me into flossing..

Fond memories of having my wisdom teeth out too. Waking up with blood-soaked tampons in your mouth is an experience :)